Candlemas.
She has been climbing a long time, and the path has been rough and dark, illumined only by the small shivering flame she cradles between cupped palms.
She isn't sure exactly what happened to her, down there in the deep underground caverns. She knows that there was something before then; she can remember the sun, and the trees, and loving, and grieving. It was a story told well, and then she went into the earth.
And in the caves, there was a forgetting. There was a darkness darker than night, and a paring down, even unto her very self. She remembered a moment, in the very heart of the cave, when she gazed into her reflection, and the mirror looked back. It had been a moment of gifting, a moment of renewal, a moment of mystery in which she became herself again (though she had never stopped being herself) and afterward, the climb.
There was a light now, or perhaps just a lessening of the dark, but the little candleflame is no longer the only illumination. She can see the stones beneath her feet, and the undulating walls of the passageway, painted with scenes in ochre and iron. And then there is a fierce brightness ahead of her, and she steps out from under the archway of the cavern into a dawn of lemony light and cold snow.
She stands there, straight and tall, her gown as white as the world around her. She walks forward into the clearing, and the snow recedes, pulling away from every step of her bare feet, revealing thin green shoots spiking up out of the moist soil. She looks up into the branches of the trees -- the beloved trees -- and on each and every branch they are decorated with tightly furled buds.
She has come into the morning of the world, and she rises awake with it, renewed and ready to sing new songs and dance new dances. She is the pillar of light at the beginning, she is the opening of the world, she is the first step onto a new path, she is the silent flame that burns within, wakening Spring in every heart.
She isn't sure exactly what happened to her, down there in the deep underground caverns. She knows that there was something before then; she can remember the sun, and the trees, and loving, and grieving. It was a story told well, and then she went into the earth.
And in the caves, there was a forgetting. There was a darkness darker than night, and a paring down, even unto her very self. She remembered a moment, in the very heart of the cave, when she gazed into her reflection, and the mirror looked back. It had been a moment of gifting, a moment of renewal, a moment of mystery in which she became herself again (though she had never stopped being herself) and afterward, the climb.
There was a light now, or perhaps just a lessening of the dark, but the little candleflame is no longer the only illumination. She can see the stones beneath her feet, and the undulating walls of the passageway, painted with scenes in ochre and iron. And then there is a fierce brightness ahead of her, and she steps out from under the archway of the cavern into a dawn of lemony light and cold snow.
She stands there, straight and tall, her gown as white as the world around her. She walks forward into the clearing, and the snow recedes, pulling away from every step of her bare feet, revealing thin green shoots spiking up out of the moist soil. She looks up into the branches of the trees -- the beloved trees -- and on each and every branch they are decorated with tightly furled buds.
She has come into the morning of the world, and she rises awake with it, renewed and ready to sing new songs and dance new dances. She is the pillar of light at the beginning, she is the opening of the world, she is the first step onto a new path, she is the silent flame that burns within, wakening Spring in every heart.